By Sarah Lindblom Working from home as a writer can be a dream! Flexible, convenient and productive – you are the envy of your friends who spend hours a day commuting to work. A brilliant idea! Start a business from home… Two weeks later you realise that you have not left the house or your […]
Recently, we held a Life Writing/Memoir Bootcamp. We offered participants an opportunity to showcase a snippet of their work on our blog. Here are some pieces from some very brave souls. Biographical Achilles in Fearful Momentum by Terissa Sheperd Memories may be selective, heart driven, sense driven, ego driven. There is a natural ‘papering over’ […]
By Simon Collinson You’re a young writer. You have ideas and ambition, and even a few pieces of writing sitting in a drawer, but no idea where to send them. Sound familiar? Getting work published is a dilemma for writers of every age, but is particularly severe for younger writers with little experience in the […]
By Piri Eddy As the saying goes, ‘Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.’ But for most of us, our lives don’t consist of car chases and explosions, or thrilling plot twists and tensely built narratives. Heck, most of us don’t even split our pants down the middle bending over for a dollar on the sidewalk. […]
By Barbara Santich It might come as a surprise, but food writing is not really about food. Food is not usually the main focus. More often, food writing is about people and their experiences of growing, sourcing, cooking, offering and eating food; it’s about their relationships with food, their memories associated with food, the place […]
By Steve Evans We all form opinions, and more or less continuously. You finish reading a book and ask yourself, would I recommend it, and why? Perhaps you began to realise early on in which direction such thoughts were heading. On the other hand, maybe you got part way through and were later surprised at […]
By Katrina Germein JOIN KATRINA FOR HER EXAMINING EXCELLENT PICTURE BOOKS WORKSHOP Dear Katrina, I want to write a picture book but I want to do it my own way. I’ve read that picture books should have repetition and I think repetition is boring. I’ve read that publishers like stories where children solve […]
By Steve Evans We are all creatures of habit. Sometimes we try to shuck those tendencies—give up smoking, be fitter, become a better friend, learn how to write a bestseller. Sometimes it seems we are offered, if not a miracle cure, then an easy way through. No-one is immune to the temptations of inside information […]
By Jennie Cumming Thanks to the proliferation of specialised websites and zines, short fiction has become more popular in recent years. Because of the time involved in providing feedback on each other’s work, the writing group I belong to restricts the monthly submission from each member to about 1500 words. We critique no more than […]
By Walter Mason I recently did an event with author, psychotherapist and healer Sharon Snir and I was struck by how she described her writing as a way of making peace in the world. I am used to the idea of writing as a form of therapy, or of social and political expression, or even […]
By Walter Mason Have you ever read any of the work of Steven Pressfield? He is very much the creativity guru of the moment, and I like him because he really deals in a type of tough love for artists and writers. No molly-coddling, no delicate nurturing of the creative heart. He is all about […]
By Walter Mason I’ve never really been much of a one for big things. Even though I come from Queensland, the lure of big things, grand vistas and sublime moments has never really been felt. I have always focused firmly on the small, the domestic. It is this perspective which grounds me, and which I […]
By Lia Weston Continued on from a previous post Nothing makes my heart sink like an ‘HILARIOUS LoL LoL OMG SO TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’ email forward. Guaranteed to fulfil none of the subject line promises, it tends to fall into one of two camps: ‘women are smart and funny, while men are crap at taking directions’ (if […]
By Threasa Meads In his memoir, Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov says: Neither in environment nor heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the anonymous roller that pressed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life’s foolscap. By […]
By Ben Brooker I don’t believe in giving advice to aspiring writers. I know this is a problematic way to begin a blog post in which I’ve been asked to dispense tips, but what else is one to say? Read. Lots. And write. Lots. There really is nothing else to be said. I do, however, […]
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